But where one of them should have an example but from the other,
I cannot imagine, there being nothing of this kind that I can
find in story, but the oligarchy of Athens, the Thirty Tyrants of
the same, and the Roman Decemvirs.
For the oligarchy, Thucydides tells us, that it was a Senate
or council of 400, pretending to a balancing council of the
people consisting of 5,000, but not producing them; wherein you
have the definition of an oligarchy, which is a single council
both debating and resolving, dividing and choosing, and what that
must come to was shown by the example of the girls, and is
apparent by the experience of all times; wherefore the thirty set
up by the Lacedaemonians (when they had conquered Athens) are
called tyrants by all authors, Leviathan only excepted, who will
have them against all the world to have been an aristocracy, but
for what reason I cannot imagine; these also, as void of any
balance, having been void of that which is essential to every
commonwealth, whether aristocratical or popular, except he be
pleased with them, because that, according to the testimony of
Xenophon, they killed more men in eight months than the
Lacedaemonians had done in ten years; "oppressing the people (to
use Sir Walter Raleigh's words) with all base and intolerable
slavery.
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